November 29, 2006

Hello Folks,

It is time again to read another blog posting. (Gaaa! No, don’t make me!). I thought you might be interested in seeing some of the things that our Capacity Building program spends money on. I happen to have lists of expenditures for August and September here before me. This will tell you what your contributions are used for.

The first item that catches my eye is "car tire patching fees." We have a 4WD vehicle, the "car," that we use to carry things and people out to the health centers and villages. Apparently it had a flat tire, and it cost $1.93 to patch it. That’s US dollars. The dollar, as well as the Cambodian riel, is used as a medium of exchange everywhere in Cambodia. If you live here, you carry two currencies, the riel and the dollar. One dollar equals about 4,200 riel. For everyday accounting the ratio is 4,000 to one. The largest Cambodian bill I have seen (there may be something larger) is 10,000 riel, which is a little under $2,50. Obviously the riel is small change compared to the dollar, so the dollars in your pocket are worth more than the riels even if you have far more riels than dollars. If you buy something for $2.50, you will probably give them two dollars plus 2,000 riel, or you might give them three dollars and receive 2,000 riel in change. There are no coins. The riel comes in denominations of 100 (2.5 cents), 500 (12.5 cents), 1000 (25 cents), and 10,000.

When you give a merchant $20 for a purchase, and especially $50 or $100, they demonstrate their professional expertise in inspecting it’s legitimacy by holding it up to the light, closing one eye and squinting through the other, crumpling it, rubbing it, snapping it. I’ve had a bill returned because someone had scribbled a word on it, or because it was too old. For that matter, any bill of the old style, before the US government redesigned the bills to make them harder to counterfeit, is always suspect. I knew this, so when I got some hundred-dollar bills at the bank in California before coming over here, I insisted that they all be of the new style. So how about Cambodian bills, you might ask. Do they inspect them? Ha ha ha ha ha. They’re not worth anything, so why would they? You get the oldest, dirtiest bills you’ve ever seen, although not always. The newest and cleanest appear to be the 100 riel bills.

The $1.93 for patching a tire reminds me of my recent experience in doing a flush and fill on the radiator of my car, since I had no idea how long ago the last one was done, if ever. I bought the coolant at a gas station for $5.00 and took it to a garage to do the flush and fill. The garage was an open field with two concrete ramps, each with a slot up the middle so that a mechanic could walk (actually crouch) under the car to work on it from below. No hydraulic jacks here. They also drive cars up the ramp to wash them with high powered hoses, which they were doing on both ramps when I was there, probably to avoid creating a very big mud puddle around the cars if they did it on the ground.

The mechanic got to work, draining my radiator and flushing water through both the radiator and the reservoir with a high powered hose to get rid of all the coolant inside. He then closed it up, put in the coolant and the water, started the engine to see if everything was working properly, and then turned to me for payment. I asked my Cambodian friend how much to give him. (I don’t want to give you the idea that I can do Car Talk in Khmer, so I was happy to have a friend there.) He told me to give the mechanic $1.00. Add $5.00 for the coolant and you are paying about 10% of what you would pay in the US, if I remember correctly.

That $1.00 for the mechanic is actually pretty good pay for 20 minutes of uncomplicated work. I don’t know how much training he has had, but I doubt that he is a certified auto mechanic. I wonder whether there is a single certified auto mechanic in the whole country, but they do seem to know what they are doing.

By the way, I also have no idea how many riel you would receive in change after paying $2.00 for a $1.93 tire patching charge. I guess 300 riel. You take whatever they give you. At those amounts, what difference does it make? It reminds me of a three story "bookstore" in Phnom Penh which had only one shelf of novels, all by Agatha Christie, so I decided to buy an Agatha Christie novel to occupy my time. It had a $4.99 sticker on it, probably from some book store in the US that couldn’t sell it. The girl at checkout said she wouldn’t give me change.

The next item on the list is office rental for August, $267.00. Actually, the Angkor Hospital for Children pays the rent for the white house, where we work. We sublet the downstairs for offices while the hospital offers the rooms upstairs to volunteers who provide their assistance to the hospital gratis. Since both the hospital and the Capacity Building program are facing cuts in the budget next year, the hospital will stop providing housing to volunteers, so they will stop renting the white house. That means we will have to find another home. In case you are wondering, I share an office (which was designed as a bedroom) with three other people, including the Program Manager.

The next item is Telesurf fees for August of $63.80. Telesurf is the internet service provider that we use. They charge a flat fee for the month, but add a surcharge if you download more than is allowed under that fee. You can pay more for them to raise the amount you can download. They do that at your home, too. I inquired of an ISP about connecting at Nida Villa. The price was $70.00 per month plus a surcharge for excessive downloading. I don’t remember how much downloading they allowed before adding the surcharge. It sounded like a lot, but do you know how much you download in a month? So we decided not to connect to the internet at our villa. It would not have been a particularly fast connection either. A faster connection would have been $120.00 plus a surcharge for excessive downloading, but even then it would not have been what we call broadband in the US.

Another expense was training materials for four village health volunteer monthly meetings in the Reul, Angkor Thom, Angkor Chum, and Char Chhouk health center catchment areas held between July 26 and July 31. The cost for these materials was $6.20. See? Even if you give as little as $6.20, you can enable us to buy training materials for monthly meetings with village health volunteers so they keep their villagers better informed about good health practices. A little money goes a long way over here. One hundred thirteen volunteers attended, by the way.

Those volunteers received per diem to reimburse them for the costs of attending a meeting away from their villages. It seems only fair to do this; they incur expenses that we should reimburse. The per diem was $1.20 each, totaling $135.60. There are a lot of per diem expenses on the list. We pay per diem to villagers and health center workers to attend our meetings and workshops, sometimes held for several days at the Angkor Hospital for Children. We also give our own staff per diem when they travel.

The 4WD car needed a new battery. $48.00. Another transportation expense: $32.02 to change the oil and replace the front baskets on two motorbikes. And another motorbike expense: $1.00 for unspecified repairs.

Uh oh. Here’s one for $15.25 for balloon and mask to elect village health volunteers in Char Chhouk. That’s right: balloon and mask. Now I am obviously not hiding anything from you. I believe in transparency. I didn’t have to mention this one. If you are going to give money, you need to know what you are giving it for, and here you are giving it for "balloon and mask." I’m sure there is some justifiable connection between an election and balloon and mask. I will get to the bottom of this.

Can you take a few more of these? I’ll post a picture to keep your interest alive. Let me rummage through my picture box here for a minute. There’s one from India; but you want Cambodia. There’s one–whoops! Ha Ha. Got that one off the internet. Ah, here we go, a picture of part of the old market in Siem Reap.

I am standing in front of the Siem Reap book store taking this picture. That’s Pub Street starting over there in the middle; they close it off to cars at night. It is a short street with a number of bars and restaurants. The old market is very nice, actually–there are lots of other stores, including gift shops, bookstores, travel agents, and an open-air market with fresh food, clothing, luggage, and all kinds of stuff. There is a clothing store called Hollywood where I bought some shirts and a pair of LACOSTE pants. That’s right: LACOSTE. It’s printed right there on the inside of the waistband: LACOSTE. About $20, as I recall. Two shirts had a LLBTISS label, and the other one said JINDULUOLAN. I’m not kidding. And they are all in capital letters. Top-of-the-line men’s wear. You can’t find these labels in the States. The old market fills up with tourists at night and–I’m told–keeps going pretty late. We stay home and watch HBO movies. We’re retired, after all.

Anyway, where were we? Another expenditure: $3.08 for gasoline to power a generator to show a health promotion film in the field. Most of the gasoline we purchase is for the diesel 4WD and for motorcycles. There are may entries for gasoline, as you might imagine, with all the motorbike traveling we do.

Another: $24.64 for material needed to renovate a water well at Angkor Chum health center. One of the things the program does is to pay for any renovations needed at the health center when it comes under our care. That includes inside and outside the health center–the water well, a water tank, an external privy, a baby weighing scale, health related posters, medical supplies, drugs, etc.. We bring it up to professional standards and make sure it has what the Ministry of Health calls the Minimum Package of Activities. We also give the staff professional training so they have confidence that they can provide good service.

Here’s a bill for drinking water for village health volunteers training at Char Chhouk, $2.00. Clean drinking water, as you might imagine, is a big deal. We provide it at meetings. Most villages lack clean drinking water, and that is the cause of much of their sickness. Hence our work with Rotary to provide small water purifiers, ideally one to every three households in the villages. I’m sure I will be writing more about that later.

Well, you have been very patient, and I appreciate that. More later when I think of something else to occupy your time.

News break: I have been told, confidentially, so don’t breathe a word about this, that I would at some point witness–yes, witness–the use of balloon and mask, and then I would understand; but that I could not understand without witnessing it up close, deep in the jungle, far from the watchful eyes of The Authorities. I will at that time have a report for you. (Keep this under your hat!)

All the best!

Jim

October 31, 2006

Hi folks!

Bought a car. Yep, we bought a car. I wanted a motorcycle, because it is so easy to get around on a motorcycle. You zip here and zip there. But that is seen precisely as the problem–you can zip right into something. The car we bought is an old Corolla, older than the Corolla that we used to have in Virginia. The air conditioner works, which is important here. The motor runs, which is always helpful. The tires are good. Four of the five seatbelts work. We could even drive to Phnom Penh if we wanted to, but then we would have to drive in Phnom Penh, which is much worse than driving here. I can’t imagine driving in Phnom Penh; it would be suicidal. Every traffic law in the world, including the three on the books in Cambodia, are willfully ignored in Phnom Penh. The three laws in Cambodia are 1) stop when asked to by signs or lights; 2) drive on your own side of the road, Dummy; and 3) you get no points for hitting grandmothers.

I will still be riding motorcycles, or motos, as we call them, from time to time. They are Hondas that the Capacity Building Program bought used. That’s how we tend to get out in the country, given the state of the roads here, and the Program needs to get to the health centers and villages. Moreover, as we add two new health centers to work with each year, we are reaching farther out in the province. Last week, the two dramatic performances I mentioned in the last posting were delivered some 50 or 55 kilometers from home. Even four-wheel drive vehicles can’t go where motos can go, or if they can, they do it more slowly. For that matter, four-wheel drive vehicles on some of the country roads around here get passed by bicycles, which even village matrons can pedal quietly around deep potholes without missing a beat.

To get to the first day's performance, I rode on the back of a moto, holding on for dear life. There’s something more scary about sitting on the back, having no control, being largely unable to see around the driver, than about driving your own moto. So for two hours I gripped the bars underneath the seat thinking that would protect me. Even if we didn’t hit anything, the bumps throw you up in the air and you wonder where the moto will be when you come down. The second day, I rode out in a small bus and rode back in the four-wheel drive. The bus is not a normal part of our vehicular repertoire and the four-wheel drive is not always available, so I have been told to expect to drive a moto in the future when we go out to the villages.

This coming Wednesday I will drive to work for the first time in our new car. Tomorrow, Monday, is a holiday. Actually today, Sunday, is the holiday; it’s the anniversary of the present king’s accession to the throne (King Sihamoni). But the holiday is observed tomorrow. Tuesday is also a holiday. It is the birthday of the previous king, King Sihanouk. So on Wednesday I will drive to work. My guess is that by fighting my way skillfully through traffic I will get there in six or seven minutes. If I were going to the Angkor Hospital for Children, it would take only five minutes. But I go over to the Wat Damnak area now–you all know it: cross the Siem Reap River, take a right past Wat Damnak, turn left down a dirt road to what we call the "White House." That’s where the Capacity Building Program works. We don’t spend our money on frills.

I am actually writing this posting before sending the previous posting, which I hope to send to you tomorrow morning if possible. (Yes, I’ll be working on a holiday.) If I manage to do that, those of you who live in America will receive it today, Sunday. That’s why we will outlive you, having gone west to get east. We do things before you even think of them. We are always in the vanguard. If you remember, we discussed this issue in an earlier posting.

I wanted to get this new posting going so that I can send you some pictures of the performances that I have been telling you about. The two messages of this performance were tuberculosis and childhood vaccinations. We limit the messages to two at a time because it is easier to remember only two. (I say "we" limit, but of course I don’t limit anything. I just work here, trying to help them with administrative stuff. All these decisions are made by people who have experience in these kinds of things. If I were the audience, they would have to limit the message to one, or perhaps not even bother.)

These two performances were both given in the morning, which meant that most adults were working in the fields and couldn’t come, so our audience consisted mostly of rapt children. Putting shows on in the evening can be complicated, though, both for the audience and for us, but we want to try it soon.

The first show was delivered from a concrete stage in the middle of a field across the road from a school. The only shade came from the roof over the stage and from a large tree about thirty meters from the stage and to the right. The audience stayed in the shade. Fortunately, the tree shade fell to the left, bringing them roughly in front of the stage rather than farther to the right, where they would have stayed relatively cool but missed the show. As the sun moved over the horizon during the course of the morning, the shade moved, and so did the people. Every time I looked, the audience had shifted to cover a different patch of ground. The second performance took place in a large meeting hall with a roof overhead in a pagoda. This allowed the entire audience to sit under the roof and watch the performance.

The performances include skits that give messages and other skits that are just funny. The performance started with the voice of a giant coming from backstage. It was a low pitched, guttural voice–loud, commanding. He came frontstage, continuing to talk in this low growl.


Note the shoes and the microphone. All the actors carried a wireless microphone, but only the giant wore athletic shoes. I don’t know if that was deliberate or if that’s just how he felt comfortable. The story line in this skit, I was told, was that a mere germ, so small that you can’t see it, can’t possibly bring down a giant, but of course this giant started getting a cough. The writing and symbol behind him on the curtain announce that the show is presented by the Capacity Building Program.

The performance was accompanied by three musicians, one on a single-stringed instrument played with a bow, one on drums, and one on a kind of xylophone.



The man with the stringed instrument, whom I will call the fiddler, played during most of the performance; the drums and xylophone joined in during transitions between skits. I took another picture of the fiddler by himself and noticed his foot and the television that sat facing the players, not facing the audience.


What was the TV for? Well, later they played karaoke on the TV. The audience couldn't see the TV but they could hear the music. An actor could see the TV and sing the words that appeared at the bottom of the screen. All the power for the sound system and the TV was supplied by a generator that we brought along.

I figured the fiddler was likely to have another foot and wondered where it was. I went around to his side of the stage and got a peek between the TV next to him and the curtain and rail behind him. Here it is:

Notice the rapt audience:

By the way, I want to develop within you a Pavlovian response to pictures of children such as these, so that when you see pictures of Cambodian children you can’t help but think must...write...check, and you will grab your checkbook and write a check to FWAB. With each check, you help fund both the Angkor Hospital for Children and the Capacity Building and Health Education Program. How can you beat that? (Yes, Uncle Gaylord, in the U.S. you get a tax deduction.) For more information, just click here:

http://www.fwab.org/Pages/donations.htm

Another skit dealt with childhood immunizations and why they are critical to the child’s health. Here are two young women carrying their babies discussing the recommended schedule of vaccinations and pointing out that vaccinations are available at the health center.

Here is another skit that takes place at the health center between the nurse and several patients.

There were silly skits:

There was poignant drama:

There was song:

One of the last skits was a boxing match:

The rest of the pictures may gross some of you out. You may decide when you get to the end of this paragraph that you don’t want to see them. Near the end of the first performance, some of the actors who had no more roles to play started cooking lunch for the whole group. I had earlier seen a large frog that someone had captured. They tied a long ribbon around the frog’s leg so he could hop around but couldn’t escape. I had not, however, seen a plastic bag full of live frogs, shown in the first picture here. The man standing on the left is taking out one frog after another and cutting off the head against a tree (second picture) with a machete. The head falls to the ground. (This is not shown clearly in the picture.) He throws the body into the pot of now bloody water (third picture), from which the boy and the two men take them out and pull off their skin, which is left on the ground. (Isn’t it nice to see a young boy learning a trade?) Then they break up the pieces of frog by hand (fourth picture) and place them in the large cooking pot (last picture), to which oil, greens, salt and other condiments are added to cook them. Gross? Think about how you get your chickens pieces or your sausage. The large captive frog escaped the pot. I don’t know whether he escaped from captivity.

Gotta go. It’s lunch time.

October 30, 2006

Dear Readers,

We’re back. Back on line and back in Cambodia. These blog postings don’t come every day, so savor them when you get them.

Got out into the villages again. Best part of this job. We went to see a little drama troupe practice for an upcoming production. I'm told that the members of the troupe are mostly from Kampong Thom Province. They earn money by putting on shows. When they do a show for the Capacity Building and Health Education Program, they include messages about a couple of health issues, in this case TB and vaccinations. The Program has a number of other messages to tell, for example malaria, HIV/AIDS, dengue fever, prenatal care, but each performance is limited to two so as not to confuse people with too many messages. The performances are accompanied by three musicians, one who plays a stringed instrument throughout the show, and two others on drum and xylophone who contribute during transitions from one skit to the next.

Villagers love to watch dramatic performances and they remember what they hear in a dramatic performance much more than they remember what they hear in a lecture. Sounds like the rest of us, doesn’t it. So a group of three talk about tuberculosis: one of them is coughing and the other two tell him what it may indicate and suggest strongly that he go visit the local health center to get it checked out. It’s not as dry as that: a little song and a little dance and a little slapstick are included in the skit. Or they discuss the importance of getting a child vaccinated so as to provide immunity against a variety of diseases. Skits with messages are interspersed with skits that are just fun, for example a comic boxing match.

When we saw them, they were practicing under a large house in a village. You will remember that Khmer houses are traditionally built on stilts so as to leave room underneath for live dramatic performances. A rather small crowd of people watched, mostly children. Several of my colleagues from the Program offered support and suggestions.

This performance will be presented twice in the next two days at different locations convenient to as many villages as possible. In addition to passing on important health messages, it encourages villagers to use the health centers that the government has established all over the country. Health centers have not been particularly visible in the past, nor have they been well managed or adequately staffed with trained nurses. So the Program is also working to upgrade the professionalism of the health centers to ensure that it is staffed from nine to five, as promised, that nurses are trained, that it is equipped with appropriate medicines and vaccines, that it has a working well and clean drinking water, that it has a model vegetable garden, and that it has clean sanitary facilities. At the same time, the Program trains the village health volunteers so that they can be effective front-line health workers providing advice and direction to the villagers.

Today’s visit was unexpected, so I didn’t have my camera. When I went to work, I thought I would be reviewing records of Program expenditures all day. Fun, fun, fun! I hope to be able to take some pictures at the live performances so that you can see what this is all about. There are a few pictures below on another subject, however, for those of you who like multi-media presentations.

Where are we back in Cambodia from, you may ask. We went to Vietnam. Why did we go? Because I (Jim) had had two consecutive 30-day, single-entry visas and had to leave. Foreigners have to work their way through a complicated set of steps to get a long-term multiple-entry visa. One requirement is to acquire a written request from the Minister of Foreign Affairs himself that asks the immigration officials at the border to issue a three-month single-entry business (not tourist) visa upon my reentry. I have now acquired that. The final step, which the Angkor Hospital for Children is doing for me (they’ve been very helpful through all this), is to get a six-month multiple-entry visa, which will need to be renewed every six months but with no requirement to leave the country again in order to do so.

The reason we went to Vietnam rather than someplace else is that we were able to book a five-day tour with a travel agent here in Siem Reap that took us to Ho Chi Minh City and Dalat. Simply because of the airfare, flying to Bangkok would have been much more expensive, and we have seen Bangkok often already.

Part of the excitement for me, at least, was making a land crossing rather than flying. Our little bus (a Ford) comfortably carried eight of us plus a driver and a guide to the border, going through territory that was occupied at various times in the 1960s and 1970s by the Viet Cong, the North Vietnamese, the South Vietnamese army, the Americans, the Khmer Rouge, and always the long-suffering Khmer people who lived and farmed there and dodged bullets and bombs (unsuccessfully for hundreds of thousands of them) for years.

Vehicles weren’t allowed to cross the border, so we unloaded the bus and took our luggage through Cambodian customs, then shlepped it about two hundred yards to Vietnamese customs and immigration officials, then got on another bus with another guide and another driver to continue into Vietnam. This guide was a Khmer Kraum, or a southern Khmer, which is to say a Khmer from the Mekong Delta, which was Khmer territory before the Vietnamese swept south. He spoke both Khmer and Vietnamese.

We didn’t see Ho Chi Minh City in any organized way, but it appeared to be a very large, sprawling, crowded, noisy, polluted place, which is not so different from other major cities in this part of the world. I remember it from 1970 as less crowded and less noisy and full of barbed wire and Americans, but still a graceful and beautiful place, characterized by French colonial architecture, sidewalk cafes, and women riding Vespas with their ao dai fluttering behind in the wind. The ao dai is gone, unfortunately, except for sales girls in the more expensive shops and school girls in some schools. Clothing of choice for women is pretty much the same there now as anywhere: jeans and blouses predominate.

People getting married, however, seem to dress alike in much of the world. Here are young newlyweds getting their picture taken by a professional (with me horning in) in a public park in Ho Chi Minh City that would have been a nice park in any American city.

We went to a wonderful children’s park in Ho Chi Minh City too, with a lake, a zoo with crocodiles and snakes and monkeys, and an amusement park with full-scale rides including a roller coaster and a ferris wheel (see picture). I thought it was wonderful that the city put money into that park to entertain the children. It is a luxury that you don’t see in many poor countries.

And here are two women in the park hoping to be rescued from the dragons. They are sisters from Cambodia, and part of our tour group.

Dalat is a much different place. It is nearly a mile high in elevation, surrounded by mountains, a small lake at its center, full of French colonial architecture that is clean and well-maintained. It has long been a resort, a place to get away, relax, unwind. It is a place for honeymooners, whom you see strolling by the lake shore hand in hand. We walked around one evening after dinner, stopped for coffee at a café, watched students from two universities waving pom poms and singing cheers (cynical American students would find that amusing), made our way through night markets selling food, souvenirs, warm clothing. It was cool, maybe in the upper sixties. I was wearing a T-shirt, but Vietnamese were more likely to have wrapped themselves warmly in parkas and gloves and scarves. LL Bean (another plug!) could make money with a store in Dalat. Alas, no ao dai here either.

Outside town, you can ride a gondola, climb a mountain, visit a garden, stop at a small shop for tea, buy a bottle of liquor with a cobra and a scorpion inside for potency, ride a sled on a track down a steep hill where you have to do the braking because there is nothing else to stop you. We visited a place where the only activity seemed to be trying to make a wooden tabletop swivel without actually touching it. Nobody accomplished that, but it didn’t seem to matter. Dalat is the most charming town I have seen anywhere in Southeast Asia, though I may still find one better.
Our guide hired a photographer for half a day to take pictures of us. I don’t think he took a single picture of me, which was perfectly fine. Instead, he seemed to want to take pictures of the women in our group. I can’t blame him for that. The women will buy his pictures. He was good at posing his models and I stood behind him to get a picture of this pose by one of the two sisters surrounded by dragons in the picture above.

The next one shows the mountains around Dalat. It has just rained, leaving low clouds in the valleys.

This is a picture of a vegetable garden next to a pond and a shack, possibly someone’s house, taken from the gondola in the mountains above Dalat as we passed over. The Vietnamese have cultivated nearly every piece of land available. They number about 84 million people, compared to Cambodia’s 14 million or so.

Finally, at least for this part of today’s lecture, I took a picture of this woman at a waterfall just below the city of Dalat when we were on our way back to Ho Chi Minh City. I thought she was Vietnamese, but it turned out that she was Khmer too, part of another Khmer tour group following the same schedule we were following.

When we returned to Ho Chi Minh City (I still want to call it "Saigon"), one among our group suggested that we stop at a restaurant he knew where the food was particularly good, a place called "quan an ngon," according to their business card. This restaurant has no kitchen and prepares no food. All the items on their menu are made by carefully selected contract chefs scattered around the first floor who do their cooking in full view of the clientele. Instead of looking at the menu, you can walk around and decide what to eat based on what you see them making. It had been raining (it rained about three times a day in Vietnam when we were there) and the water was dripping from tarpaulins that sheltered the open center of the restaurant, keeping the tile walkways wet and glistening. The waiters were solicitous and polite, but didn’t seem to speak any English, much less Khmer, so our guide was more than helpful. We had thought to have just a snack, but started to order real food and ended up having what looked very much like a full dinner. Ten people. One or two dishes each, plus cold drinks.

We left to go straight to our scheduled dinner, which was on a boat on the Saigon River. (Apparently they retained the name Saigon for the river.) We ate very little there but enjoyed the show, which consisted mostly old people (I'm not one of them!) singing and dancing with a very versatile band backing them up. Our guide, who is young, took the stage to sing a Cambodian love song (they always seem to be about unrequited love) and the band knew the music to that too. After dinner, the boat pulled away from the dock and they gave us a little trip up and down the river.

On the way back to Phnom Penh the next day, we had to wait for a ferry to carry us across a river. I took this picture of a woman waiting in the cab of a truck next to us.

Finally, at least in terms of visual aids in this installment, this picture tells you where those big red aromatic Christmas candles come from. Yes, Vietnam. No, wait! Those aren’t candles. Those are tiny shrimp being sold in the Ho Chi Minh City market. Sorry for the mistake. My bad.


Our best to all of you.
Viriyane and Jim

October 4, 2006

Dear Friends,

We have a lot to talk about today, so put on a pot of coffee, settle comfortably in an easy chair (not a hammock, because we don’t want you falling asleep), and take it all in. I want you to learn as much as possible about Friends Without a Border and Cambodia.

The Angkor Hospital for Children, as you know, serves children in Siem Reap Province, or for that matter any child who comes from anyplace for help. The problem is that many children can’t come here. They live in distant or remote areas. They have no transportation. They have no money to pay anyone to provide transportation. They may not have heard about the hospital. Worse, their parents may not know what is happening to the child or that it can be treated successfully with modern medicine. But the hospital can’t easily be replicated in other locations to make it more accessible to these children.

So in May, 2001, Friends Without A Border initiated a second Project (after the hospital) called the Capacity Building and Heath Education Program (CBHEP). The idea is to build the capacity and improve the quality of community health services throughout the province (Capacity Building) and to improve health promotion practices among the population of the province (Health Education).

Under government mandates, the province is divided into 60 health center catchment areas. Each one contains a health center staffed by nurses who can provide basic treatment and refer more difficult cases to referral hospitals, of which there are only three in a province with nearly 900,000 people. Each village is mandated to have at least two village health volunteers who work with the people to introduce good health practices.

The program which FWAB has undertaken is designed to raise the level of service provided in health centers, to train the village health volunteers, and to integrate the two with each other and with the operational health districts that oversee the health centers. The goal, as noted, is to upgrade health services throughout the province and to increase public awareness of good health practices.

This is a small program with limited funding. The program takes two new health centers each year into a four-year program, so at that rate it will take 30 years to work with all the currently existing health centers. That is not a criticism. Resources are limited.

So where do I fit in? I am now working in administration for the Capacity Building program: I draw up plans, write reports, attend meetings. Sounds like a job. I just got started with this program last week and have lots to learn. Most of the time I will be in the office. The really fun thing I get to do, though, is travel to health centers and villages. It is heaven getting out there! Of course, I know I don’t have to live there, but it is especially beautiful at this time of year.

I have made three trips so far accompanying the head of the program. The first was in a large, old land rover to a health center and a village, the second was on the back of an old motorcycle to a village school. (The program buys only used vehicles.) Both trips were difficult. One village was accessible not by a road but only by an ungraded bullock cart track. The land rover would have been too wide for the track. The third trip was in the land rover again.

This is still the rainy season. It had rained hard the night before we went out on a motorcycle and water was everywhere–in the rice paddies, filling the potholes, coursing across the trail. Whether mud or water, unpaved roads are a uniform reddish brown color, and the road is treacherous. You can slide down the bank into the rice paddies; you can slip down the sides of potholes; you can slide even on level ground. We came upon a pothole that filled the entire road, leaving no way to go around unless we wanted to drive into the wet paddy on one side or the other. We drove straight into the pothole, not knowing how deep it was. At the bottom, the sparkplug got wet and the engine stopped. I got off the motorcycle and found myself standing in muddy water up to my knees. Fortunately we got the spark plug working and we were on our way, until we started spinning and put our feet down to keep from falling over completely. My already wet shoe filled with oozing reddish-brown mud, making a mold around my foot.

Our destination was a school where villagers had gathered to hear about clean drinking water. The program cooperates with Rotary International to install Bio-sand water filters that are cheap, small enough for a single household, and provide clean water instantly just by dumping in a bucket of any water the villager can find, even a bucket of canal water where the water buffalo have been wallowing. They also require almost no maintenance. The only difficult thing about them is that they have to be built carefully (which the program is doing) and the sand and gravel have to be sifted properly so that they will filter the water correctly.

Since I didn’t do any of the talking at this school, I wandered around looking for things to photograph. I did this for YOU, because I know you don’t even read my text, you just look at the photos.

Here is one of a girl riding her bicycle along a path behind the school with rice paddies as far as you can see. (This has nothing to do with the program; I just like the picture.) Note the barbed wire. It forms a fence around the school yard. I asked why they use barbed wire and was told it was to keep out cows.



Whenever such a meeting is held with adults, the children are curious and stand outside at the windows to watch and listen. Here are two of those kids, a boy and a girl. They were a little small to see over the window sill, so they found themselves in front of my camera instead. How can you not love these children! (Please write a check to FWAB today!)

Next is what I think is probably a better than typical house in a village. The woman in blue and orange is a village health volunteer. She held a meeting in the open space in front of this house three days before, when the ground was drier and people could sit down on mats to listen.

Here is a picture of a health center out in the countryside, just so you get a feel for what they look like. A typical health center will have from three to nine staff, all trained nurses and midwives. They will have several rooms for private care and one or two for giving birth.

Behind this health center I found an old ambulance now in retirement, ignored and unused, much like me.

On another subject, a fifteen-day holiday nearly slipped by without waking me from my hammock. I had never heard of Pchum Ben before. Pchum Ben, you say? Fifteen-day holiday?

My usual sources (Hearsay and Innuendo) were not very fruitful, so I went to the internet to learn more. Someone named Vathany Say had actually done research about Pchum Ben. I will quote her in full. It tells you a lot about Khmer people and their beliefs. It isn’t too long.

"Cambodians believe that although most living creatures are reincarnated at death, some souls, due to bad karma, are not reincarnated but rather remain trapped in the spirit world. Each year, for fifteen days, these souls are released from the spirit world to search for their living relatives, meditate and repent. The fifteen-day observance of Prachum Benda, or Ancestors' Day, is a time for living relatives to remember their ancestors and offer food to those
unfortunate enough to have become trapped in the spirit world. Furthermore, it is an important opportunity for living relatives to meditate and pray to help reduce the bad karma of their ancestors, thus enabling the ancestors to become reincarnated and leave the torment and misery of the spirit world.

"Prachum Benda, better known colloquially as Pchum Ben, may be translated as "gathering together to make offerings" (prachum meaning "gathering together" and benda meaning "offering"). The observance usually begins in mid-September and lasts an entire lunar cycle, constituting the fifteen days that ancestral spirits are given to visit their living relatives. In the year 2003, the specific dates for its commencement and conclusion are September 11th and September 25th, respectively.

"Pchum Ben is the fifteenth and final day of the observance and consists of a large gathering of laity for festivities at the local Buddhist temple. Each day leading up to the fifteenth, however, is also important and special. Different families host services at the temple on each of the fourteen days prior to the final celebration. The days leading up to Pchum Ben are known as Kann Ben (kann meaning "hosting or holding") and are numbered one through fourteen accordingly.

"Prior to the day a family or families are scheduled to host a Kann Ben, relatives and close family friends will go to the temple to make preparations. During the preparations, urns of ancestors, traditionally kept on temple grounds, are polished and brought to the viheara (the main chanting room). Also, the names of ancestors are recorded onto an invitation list. This is important because spirits cannot receive offerings unless they are first invited to do so by living relatives. In the evening, the host family and other participants will join the monks in the viheara for meditation and chanting. The monks will then pass on the Buddha's teachings, as well as offer blessings and guidance to those present.

"Before sunrise on the morning of the Kann Ben, special food is prepared for the ancestral spirits to enjoy. Favorite dishes of various flavors and colors are offered. They range from the simple and traditional nom ansom (sticky rice wrapped in banana leaves with assorted fillings) to the more elaborate and rich amok (steamed fish fillet marinated in a complex mix of spices and herbs). As a gesture of kindness, the hosts also prepare bai ben (steamed sticky rice mixed with sesame seeds and then formed into balls) to be thrown into shaded areas about the temple grounds. This mixture is an offering to the hungry souls who have been forgotten or no longer have living relatives to make them offerings.

"Before noon on Kann Ben, candles and incense are lit and the various dishes are offered to the monks. The prepared list of names is then recited and burned. The reading and burning of the list is a ritual performed to alert and direct the wandering souls to the location of their families. It is an invitation for the ancestral spirits to join their living relatives as they commemorate life. After consuming the proffered meal, the monks continue to chant blessings, sprinkling (or showering) holy water onto the families and their visiting ancestral spirits. The Kann Ben is a time of remembrance and an opportunity to accumulate good karma on behalf of one's ancestors.

"The rituals of Kann Ben continue for fourteen days. On the fifteenth day, the traditionally observed Pchum Ben, families in the local area gather to perform the same ritual of ancestral remembrance and offer an immense communal feast. This day is especially important because if any ancestors are unfortunate enough to have become Priad spirits, it is the only day that they may receive offerings of food and benefit from the good karma earned by their relatives. Priads are the most miserable of all souls due to their exceptional bad karma. Unlike other spirits, Priads fear light and can only receive prayers, food and be reunited with their living relatives during the darkest day of this lunar cycle, the day of Pchum Ben.

"Participating in the Pchum Ben, whether as a host or participant, is a very important aspect of Cambodian culture. It is a time of reunion and commemoration. It is a time to express love and appreciation for one's ancestors. By offering food and good karma to those possibly trapped in the spirit world, living relatives help assuage their misery and guide them back into the cycle of reincarnation. After the ancestors are reincarnated, they have the opportunity to accumulate good karma on their own and look forward to attaining a peaceful inner spirit, which is the best blessing a living relative can wish for their ancestors."

My direct experience with Pchum Ben was limited to the fifteenth day, although I started hearing about people going to the pagoda to observe Pchum Ben for days before that. We joined friends on the fifteenth day to take food that they had prepared to the pagoda. They had four containers of food, and it turned out that they went to four different pagodas, presenting one container to a monk at each pagoda. (Monks were stationed at key points to receive the food and chant blessings for the donor.) While the monk chanted, the food was spirited away and the empty container was returned. This happened so fast and with such stealth that I didn’t see it happen at all even though I was watching for it by the time we got to the third and fourth pagodas. (You can see how seriously I was listening to the blessing.)

The pagodas were crowded and noisy. People bustled about, met old friends, presented food, received the blessings of the monks. The ubiquitous loudspeakers at these events drowned out most everything else: always some guy talking with the volume turned all the way up. The monks seem to look forward to Pchum Ben because they eat very well for fifteen days and receive new clothing and money to buy the few things they can own.

The holiday officially covers only the last four days, when all government offices, schools, shops and businesses are closed. Even Angkor Hospital for Children was closed except for emergencies. Fortunately, restaurants largely remained open.

Why did we go to four pagodas? Well, everyone seems to have a different take on these events, and our friend’s mother believes that the spirits of her ancestors may come to only one pagoda, so in order not to leave them without food, it is best to take food to each pagoda which they might choose to visit. Consequently, we spent most of that morning driving from one pagoda to the next.

The first picture was taken at our friend’s house. It shows sticky rice with beans in banana leaves (nom ansom) roasting over a fire. They have already been steamed; the roasting dries out the excess water and allows them to be stored longer. The heat is directly underneath, but they increased its intensity by placing the metal signboard in front and leaning a sheet of corrugated tin over the top. The stuff roasted for hours. It was very good, by the way. The bamboo table did not burn as I thought it would.

The next picture is of an open market next to the West Baray, a man-made lake built in the time of Angkor. This woman is barbequing fish, chicken, and frogs. Most of what you see is already cooked and is simply being kept warm near the heat. We bought some of each to have for lunch. (It was hardly worth it for the frogs, they had so little meat.) You will notice, if you look closely, that hammocks hang in the background. Behind each of these vendors is a long raised platform where people can sit and have lunch and take a nap in a hammock if they wish.

The last picture shows the platforms and the hammocks more clearly. It was still early, so the platforms are largely unoccupied. There are a couple of people sleeping in the background on the left. A morning nap!

Our best to all of you.

September 19, 2006

This past Sunday, we spent our time with a friend known by our daughter as "the entrepreneur." It was a family occasion, with two of her sisters, her mother, a cousin, one brother-in-law, and nieces and nephews. The two sisters own what I would call makeshift restaurants next to each other on the road to Angkor Wat, less than a kilometer short of the monument. The restaurants are little more than covered platforms over the water on the side of the road, held up by logs with bamboo slits for a floor and thatch for a roof. Had it rained, it would have kept us dry. They could not have been expensive to build.

Both restaurants provide hammocks for guests. Cambodians seem to love hammocks. They use them as a chair, with both feet on the floor on the same side or on opposite sides, or they place one foot on the floor to push back and forth while the other is doubled under. Or they have both feet in the hammock either crossed or stretched out above, which is great for the hamstrings, I found. Since you are elevated in a net when lying down in one of these hammocks, whatever breeze may be blowing pretty much cools all of you, over and under. Despite the heat of a Cambodian day, the breeze blowing off the nearby rice paddies feels delightful and is conducive to taking a nap. Taking a nap is of course the best thing to do in a hammock. Taking a nap in the morning, before lunch, is an unparalleled treat available only to the retired. Please: Don’t try this at work.

We ate lunch there on mats spread on the bamboo floor. The kitchen was out back, about twenty feet down a little trail, in a covered shack with three burners, two of them wood and one gas. Only the gas burner was lit before lunch when I was in the kitchen. Two large coolers kept food refrigerated. The ice in the coolers is purchased from an ice distributor who carries it around town in a truck, cuts it with a large saw, and sells you whatever size piece you want. (If you were in Thailand with me back in the day, you will remember this.) In this small, sparsely furnished kitchen, the cook made for us stir-fried vegetables, pork curry, fried fish, steamed shrimp, Vietnamese pancakes (called banh xeow in Vietnamese and banh chheav in Khmer), Vietnamese pork meatballs, large trays of fresh vegetables (lettuce, cabbage, green tomatoes, cucumber) to go with the pancakes and meatballs, prahok (the indescribable national dish of Cambodia), and rice. It was good, and the setting was good, and being included in their family gathering was good.

There is a hospital here, however, and I want to start talking about it. My first official act was to teach three English classes last week.

While Cambodian hospital staff speak Cambodian to each other, the Angkor Hospital for Children (AHC) has lots of English-speaking visitors. Any number of doctors and nurses and people with other useful skills visit for short or long periods of time to provide either general or specialized services to augment what the Cambodian staff provides. Thus the common language that everyone needs to know is English. In addition, the internet is a useful source of medical information that is available to the doctors and nurses in English but not in Khmer.

The hospital provides English classes on a regular basis at several levels of difficulty. While staff sign up for classes appropriate for their level, anyone at the hospital, no matter how much or how little English they know, can attend any English class they want. Sometimes people with little training come to an advanced class, or more advanced people attend a less advanced class for a refresher. This makes the classes somewhat mixed in terms of their skill level. I assume this laissez faire policy is meant to encourage staff members to come to class whenever they have time, even if it is not appropriate for their level of training.

There are two things, however, that tend to make the students homogeneous despite their different levels of familiarity with English. One is the reticence of most students at any level to participate actively in class. Cambodians are not the sort who strain to get your attention so they can answer a question in class. (Everyone who grew up in America remembers little Becky who always had the answer and wanted to be the first to let the teacher know it. The rest of us hated little Becky.) No, Cambodians are reserved, and the teacher normally has to drag answers out of them. Moreover, anyone who fails to understand is not likely to let the teacher know.

The second thing is that the books available for teaching English as a second language are based on foreign settings and foreign cultural norms. As an example, one lesson I taught included a short newspaper story about a vicar who finally passed his driving test after 17 years, 622 lessons costing over 9000 British pounds, and 56 tests. He was finally able to go visit his parishioners who lived in the villages outside town.

Very little of this story was intelligible to any of the students, starting with headline: "Here Endeth the Lessons." Then there is the vicar. What is a vicar? You have to go into a long-winded explanation of vicars and monks and how they are different because the religions are different, and you know the students are not following you. Then there is the matter of driver’s licenses and lessons and tests. Why would a vicar drive anyway? What is that all about? And visiting parishioners? Without being invited to perform a ceremony of some kind? None of it fits the Cambodian cultural context, and that just makes it more difficult.

I also accompanied a nurse making home visits on Friday afternoon. The hospital now makes home visits to about 160 patients who need follow-up after hospital visits. There are five home-visit nurses and two vehicles to carry them. They try to visit most of these patients twice a month, some once a month. Friday afternoon’s visits were to patients who live south of Siem Reap toward the landing for boats traveling back and forth across the Tonle Sap between Siem Reap and Phnom Penh. The boy in the middle of the first picture, the one who looks completely forlorn, was the first patient. He has an immune deficiency and is being taken care of by his aunt, in the background on the left. His aunt is doing a good job of caring for him, giving him antiretroviral medications on schedule. He appears to be doing well. I understand that the medications are provided by the US Agency for International Development (USAID) through CARE to the hospital.

The other children gathered around exemplify Cambodian curiosity. Wherever the nurse visits, a small crowd gathers. In this case, it is only children because, I think, we are on the porch of a house that is separate from other houses and adults would have to climb up a stairway and be really nosy in order to listen in.

I might mention that HIV/AIDS is one of the ten most frequently encountered problems at Angkor Hospital for Children. Cambodia has the highest HIV/AIDS rate in Asia: 1.9% of the population or 123,000 cases by the most recent estimate. You will be pleased to know that USAID has just signed an agreement with Cambodia to provide $30 million for HIV/AIDS, infectious diseases, child health care, health systems, and upgrading the technical skills of Cambodian health care workers. I would imagine that AHC will receive some of that money because of its participation in the public health care system and its role as a teaching hospital.

The second patient is shown in the next picture with her grandmother and the AHC nurse. Her mother is out of the picture on the right. All the "gold" that appears in the background is misleading; they live in a tiny bamboo shack about two feet off the ground surrounded by other similar shacks. Consequently a small crowd of adults gathered to listen and watch. Nothing is private here, it seems.

The nurse, on the left, spoke mainly to the mother, but the mother-in-law, who looked rather fierce, gave me the impression that she makes most of the decisions in that tiny household. Both the little girl and her slightly bigger brother are suffering from malnutrition. When breast feeding was insufficient, the family turned to sweetened condensed milk, because they could afford it, rather than formula, which they could not afford. The sweetened condensed milk did not provide needed nutrition, and children as young as they were at the time should not have cow’s milk anyway. Hence the malnutrition. By the way, malnutrition is another of the ten most treated maladies at AHC.

The boy had four or five marks on his tummy. I asked the nurse what they were and he said they were burn marks. He said that Cambodian folk medicine recommended burning as a healing agent. AHC nurses tell the mother and grandmother at every visit that burning doesn’t work and can cause serious infections. These two children represent another example of the effect of ignorance and poverty on health care.

I hope to make home visits a regular part of my stay at Angkor Hospital for Children for the insights they give me about health care here.

Finally, I have a picture of Nida Villa so you can see the impenetrable jungle, mysterious ancient monuments, and wild beasts that surround us. We’ll clear a trail for ya.

Please note that I have links above to Angkor Hospital for Children, the Cambodian embassy in Washington, the CIA Factbook on Cambodia, and the Peace Corps, if any of you would like to see what information may be there. Peace Corps is coming to Cambodia in 2007!

I am writing this on Sunday, September 3, and I am happy to report that we have reached our destination. We have been in Siem Reap since last Monday evening, flying in on Bangkok Airways from Bangkok, rather than first going to Phnom Penh, which has been our route in the past. Bangkok Airways has a monopoly on direct air travel between Bangkok and Siem Reap, and they charge a high price. If you can, find another way than through Bangkok to get here.

We are staying at a wonderful villa with a gracious host and hostess. The villa is on the main road in Siem Reap, not far from the Grand Hotel d’Angkor, where prices start at about $300 per night. It’s a ritzy neighborhood. Nida Villa, as it is called, is small, with seven bedrooms or suites, a living/dining room, two balconies upstairs, an outdoor breakfast area, and a garden with, at last count, three turkeys, four rabbits, seven dogs, four or five chickens, a mango tree, a jackfruit tree, dozens of orchids and a variety of flowering trees and shrubs. (I know that at the mention of chickens you are thinking "bird flu," but our turkeys and chickens are quite refined and somewhat snobbish; they do not consort with wildfowl.) The birds and the dogs make lots of noise whenever anyone comes through the gate, so we are clearly advised of intruders. It is something like the Garden of Eden, if you remember what that looked like when you were young.

Breakfast is included. It is sometimes Western, usually with eggs, and sometimes Khmer, with noodles or rice. Fresh fruit is also provided. It is always good; our hostess is an excellent cook. Because this place is comfortable and quiet, and because it is the right price, but most importantly because Viriyane feels safe and secure here, we have decided to stay here. We looked at a variety of houses but couldn’t find one that was just right. They were too expensive, or too big, or too small, or too far from town, or on a muddy dirt road, or without a yard, or with too much yard to take care of. Two of them had swimming pools. One pool was so small that a single stroke literally would get you to the other end. The other pool was very nice, but the place was too big and too expensive. We don’t need eight bedrooms.

If you would like to visit us, please stay here with us. Be sure to contact us well in advance so that we can advise our host and hostess to reserve a room and let you know whether we will be here too. The first four days are on us; any time after that will not be expensive–if you can afford to get here, you can afford to stay here.

We have not had much chance to look around Siem Reap. Our impression coming into town from the airport, and from my early morning walks around town, is that Siem Reap is considerably larger than it was three years ago. The only industry of note here is tourism. Hotels and restaurants abound. It is taking on the trappings of a city, with traffic lights at two intersections and dozens of townhouses being built in the middle of town, some right across the street from the Angkor Hospital for Children. A huge museum is going up close to our villa, apparently to display artifacts from Angkor. Angkor Wat is only about five kilometers (three miles or so) from our villa.

Friends gave us an auto tour of part of the monument area the other day, without actually going inside the walls of any monument, which would have required me to have a ticket. Cambodians do not need tickets; only foreigners. If you were born in Cambodia, no matter where you have citizenship now, you are considered Cambodian for the purpose of visiting the monuments. They are your legacy too.

The area around the monuments looks no different from three years ago: no new structures to accommodate tourists, no improved or widened roads, no new restaurants or hotels near the monuments. The area is an archeological park and such commercial activities are evidently not allowed. You find cars, motorcycles, motorcycle-pulled trailers (or "tuk tuks"), lots of bicycles pedaled by villagers, and some buses on those roads.

While this is the rainy season, it has not been terribly rainy in Siem Reap. We have had three storms in six days. I would like more. I love the rainy season. The rain is cool and refreshing. It may be an inconvenience to tourists, who have to find a dry place to wait for the rain to stop, but it allows them, if they are wise, to stand still for a while and observe the life of the Cambodians around them.

On an entirely different subject, I have been reading several books of late about Burma, and I would like to commend them to you. I started with a book called Looking for George Orwell in Burma, by "Emma Larkin," which is a pseudonym. "Ms. Larkin," a journalist, traveled through Burma following the trail of Orwell, who had been an officer in the Imperial Police Force in Burma in the 1920s. He later wrote a book called Burmese Days, an unflattering, though sometimes very funny, portrait of the British in Burma. Orwell was a very left-wing socialist, but he was highly critical of democratic governments such as Britain’s for their failure to confront the totalitarian nature of the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. He also wrote, as you know, and I just reread, Animal Farm and 1984, which are about totalitarian systems and eerily descriptive of how Burma has gotten to where it is today. 1984 is, I think, the most chilling book I have ever read. It was published in 1949 and Orwell died in 1950. Not long after Burma achieved independence from the British in 1948, the Burmese military conducted a coup and instituted the Burmese Way to Socialism, which has turned a promising and resource-rich country into one of the poorest and most repressed nations on earth. The military has ruled ever since, refusing to cede control of the country in 1990 to Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy, which had decisively won the only free and fair election ever held there. I also read Letters from Burma, by Aung San Suu Kyi, fifty two articles she wrote for a Japanese newspaper describing life in Burma under the rule of a totalitarian regime. She quotes one frequent visitor to Burma who called it a "Fascist Disneyland." I recommend reading the three Orwell books first, in the order in which they were written, then Larkin’s book and Aung San Suu Kyi’s book. They should all be easily available from Borders, Barnes and Noble, or Amazon.com. I got the three Orwell books at Asia Books in Bangkok, a very fine store. Drop by when you are in Bangkok.

Dear readers,
We are in Los Angeles now with our younger daughter and her husband and their baby, Strachan, who is nine months old and makes lots of noises. He is named after my mother and me. Strachan is his first name, my middle name, my mother's maiden name, and of course my grandfather's family name back to the misty origins of the Scottish clans. Strachan is not yet aware that he carries such a storied name. Because his accomplishments will be legendary, we are teaching him to be humble and generous with praise.

We drove 6,150 miles from Arlington to Los Angeles. We did not take the direct route. That does not count additional miles since arriving at our daughter's house in LA, but it does include wrong turns in San Francisco. I twice paid $3.00 and crossed the Bay Bridge to San Francisco when I did not want to. Once you commit on these highways, you can't take it back. Driving in LA is worse. The freeways form a tighter web, and Los Angelenos drive faster and closer together. Tailgating is a municipal sport here. The freeways are often jammed too. To move faster we move into the express lanes.

The express lanes here, for those of you who don't know, are the far left lanes next to the concrete barrier. They occupy the former shoulder and part of the highway, so the right tires are on the concrete roadway and the left tires are on a bumpy, potholed macadamized former shoulder. They are separated from the rest of traffic by a pair of double yellow lines. You can enter and leave the express lanes only where the yellow lines are replaced occasionally by dotted white lines. Fines for express lane violations (which include crossing the yellow lines as well as entering the lanes with only one person) start at $271. When the traffic really gets going, you find yourself speeding at 80 mph with the concrete barrier on your left and just inches between cars in front and in back. When you see your exit coming up, you have to wait for a break in the double yellow lines, but the break is short at 80 mph and the spaces in the adjacent lane are scarce, so you can't move out of the express lane and you overshoot your exit. That's OK if you know Los Angeles. We just got here.

Nevertheless, we have seen Santa Barbara, the mission at San Juan Capistrano, The Getty Museum, the Reagan Library, and the Nixon library, among other places. We also saw the Truman library in Independence, Missouri. Presidential libraries are clearly the product of the presidents who establish them. Truman's, to my mind, is challenging. It presents the key issues he faced as president, offers the views of critics and historians, and invites you to think about them for yourself. Reagan's focuses primarily on two issues--the decision to fire the air traffic controllers and the struggle to end the cold war--and presents Reagan the man as an extremely affable and inspirational figure. Nixon's fights the battle of Watergate and impeachment all over again, arguing that his critics at every stage of his career never gave him a fair chance and finally hounded him out of office with no justification. I found it sad.

I have some new pictures for you, first this one of San Francisco:

And second, this one of a public park at Monterey:

While this blog has described our trip across the US and some of our doings in California, that is not its purpose. That was just to get started, to give me some practice writing a blog, and to begin to attract readers. It's purpose is to bring alive to you the Angkor Hospital for Children in Siem Reap and the wonders of life in Cambodia. I want you to see what I see, experience what I experience, and, if possible, feel the joy and pain of real people whose lives and opportunities are so different from our own.

I got a fortune cookie today and the fortune reads: "You will continue to take chances and be glad you did." Let's hope that proves true.

I will not post another addition to the blog until after we arrive in Cambodia on August 28. We will spend ten days or so in Bangkok prior to that, but at a hotel that has not offered any internet connection in the past. We like the hotel, though, because we can get a room for only $29 per night and they have a great breakfast. We also like it because it is on the bank of the Chao Praya River on the Thonburi side next to a landing for the river ferry, which we take to cross the river to various points in Bangkok. The fare for the ferry is something like five cents. So long as I am nimble enough to jump on and off a boat on the choppy waters of the Chao Phraya River, I am willing to pay that fare.

Finally, I want to include an article from Allheadlinenews.com:

Magic Elephant Believed To Cure The Sick In Cambodia

August 1, 2006 2:57 p.m. EST
Ankit Gupta - All Headline News Staff Writer

Kompong Cham, Cambodia (AHN) - In rural Cambodia where doctors and hospitals are scarce, poor villagers are turning to a magic elephant which is believed to cure illnesses ranging from typhoid to high blood pressure.

A few times a month, Yey Proheu, a 70-year-old female elephant goes around to villages to offer relief to the sick with mahout, Pang Hy, and his assistants.

Blowing a tune from a flute made of a water buffalo horn, Pang Hy, rides the magic elephant through the dusty, unpaved roads to houses of faithful customers.

At many of the houses, the elephant lays her trunk on the stairs or inside the room of the house which are built on stilts, to bless the building and its occupants.

For those with health problems, the elephant puts her trunk into a bucket of water or water tank, and those seeking to be cured, bathe themselves using the water or they walk under the elephant a couple of times as it blows the water onto them.

The mahout's assistant lights incense during the "treatment" and sells herbal infusions.
"I believe in the medicine, because all the pain is gone after I take it. I sleep well, my appetite is better and so now I am buying more," said 40-year-old Se Vorn, who has a pain in her stomach.

"Now I see the elephant, I believe in her magic. I hope my daughter will be cured. She looks happy after bathing in the water," said 48-year-old Man Morn, who has a sick child.
Man Morn's daughter had a mysterious fever which went away after an injection by doctors but left her unable to walk. She recovered slightly after bathing in water the elephant had touched and taking the herbal infusions.

The elephant was inherited by 52-year-old Pang Hy, from his father, who was also a mahout of magic elephants.

During the brutal Khmer Rouge regime in the 1970's when nearly 1.7 million Cambodians were killed in a genocide, the ultra-Maoists had confiscated the elephant.

Pang Hy was able to get his elephant back eventually, and in 1985, started to sell medicine for a living, which earns him about $50 a trip and is a good supplement to his farm.

In addition to curing the sick, the elephant is also good at finding auspicious locations for building a house and her magic is believed to be effective in solving problems between husbands and wives.

A magic elephant that does house calls! What's not to like? Well, Jon Morgan, Executive Director of the Angkor Hospital for Children, said (if I remember correctly), "The two biggest obstacles to improving public health in Cambodia are poverty and ignorance."

All the best until next time.

Viriyane and Jim

Dear Readers,

We have switched to a blog format. This facilitates delivery of our pictures, since you don't have to download them, and puts all of our postings together in the same place. We will email you when something new has been posted.

So here are more pictures from our trip across the country, starting with this picture of bison in Yellowstone Park.

Yellowstone is, of course, a sanctuary for bison, and they wander all over, including on the roads, as you can see in the next picture. When they are visible from the road, they tend to cause traffic jams because lots of people stop to look at them. Bears are of even greater interest to tourists, drawing park rangers to direct traffic around the site and to shoot the bear with what looks like a stun gun if it gets out of control. We stopped for bison but not for bears. This one on the road is less than ten feet from our car. He started on the other side of the road but kept getting closer, so we decided that our car was no match for him and stepped on the gas. These animals weigh up to 2000 pounds and can run in bursts of 30 miles an hour. We were watching another one graze peacefully when he suddenly reared up, shook his nose violently, and ran toward the hot springs nearby looking like he had been attacked by a bee. They are very dangerous. So are bees, apparently.

Yellowstone is also full of geysers and bubbling pots and hot springs, witness the following:

Here is another hot spring, although it looks cold. These places look dangerous, and they are, if you step off the trail, but not if you don't. Unless, of course, you choose a moment to be there when everything goes kablooey. The entire Yellowstone valley is a vast caldera left behind by a monumental volcanic explosion thousands of years ago. It was thousands of times more powerful than Mt. St. Helens back in 1990. if it goes kablooey again, which it could do, you won't have to be in Yellowstone to feel its effects.

Just south of yellowstone is Grand Teton National Park, which is basically a range of impressive snow-capped mountains rising straight out of a flat plain. It is dramatic and beautiful. Our impression was that the mountains must have risen above the plain when two tectonic plates shoved against each other, but the park rangers (they are always there with an explanation) said that four fifths of the difference between the two was due to the plain sinking. Who knew? Anyway, here are two pictures of these imposing mountains.

This is Devil's Tower in eastern Wyoming, nearer to Rapid City, SD, than it is to Yellowstone. We weren't looking for it, but we found it. You all remember the Speilberg movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind with Richard Dreyfuss and Terri Garr in 1977, right?

Moving further West, we come to Portland. This photo shows the city with Mt. Hood in the background. This photo was taken on a bluff overlooking the city. That night, we had dinner in a very chic establishment near there and dined on Hawaiian Ahi cooked rare as we gazed at Portland with both Mt. Hood and Mt. St. Helens in the distance. You wondered why we retired?

Finally, a couple of scenes from the Pacific coast. We don't remember exactly where, or whether in Oregon or California. In any case, that entire coastline is rugged and beautiful. The water is too cold for swimming, although surfers will go out in body suits.

We are now enjoying our second week with our daughter in Richmond, California, across the bay from San Francisco. We have been to the city, to Napa Valley, to Oakland, and with our granddaughter to places called Pixieland and Fairyland. Such is the life of retired grandparents.

Our best to all,

Viriyane and Jim